I redesigned the site a bit (if you haven’t noticed).  The grey motif was getting to me and I thought we needed a banner image. 

Comments welcome and please let me know if you notice anything broken. 

Tags: Blog Administration by The Baseball Zealot
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Gravatars

I’ve enabled Gravatars, a form of avatars, on the site.  They’ll show up next to any of your comments.  If you don’t have one already, you can upload one at Gravatars website for free.  Until you do, I’ve provided a picture of a baseball that looks a whole lot better than the default ones they provide you.

We’ll give it a try for a while… if there’s no interest.  We’ll scrap it.  Meanwhile, you get to see my ugly mug next to each of my comments.

Simyard

Teddy Ballgame has been talking up Erick Robertson’s online fantasy baseball game, Simyard for a while so I got my butt over there and signed up.  The basic deal is free and more advanced stuff costs a bit more.  I haven’t played any but I was able to look around and it does look interesting.  Maybe if Teddy and CLuke sign up we can a Zealot league going. 

College Baseball Blog Interview

With the college baseball postseason in full swing, Brian Foley from The College Baseball Blog is making the rounds with interviews.   He was interviewed by The World Ford Sports Show recently.

Tags: Blog Administration, College Baseball, Fantasy Baseball by The Baseball Zealot
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I’ve enabled nested commenting on the blog now.  That will allow you to reply to individual comments on posts giving it more of a “discussion” feel. 

It should be pretty user-friendly.  If you want to reply to a particular comment, click on “Reply” next to comment you want to respond to.  Otherwise, post your comment a normal. 

Any problems, let me know. 

Back to Gametracker, Illinois is winning 6-1!

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Happy Birthday to The Baseball Zealot!  Three years ago, I posted the first article for this blog.  Coincidentally, it is also the birthday of TBZ co-author Teddy Ballgame.

I gave Teddy a call today over the lunch hour to wish him a happy birthday.  I got the latest on the White Sox news.  Teddy was hoping to go to the Sox game tonight but as everything with the Midwest lately, it was dependent on the weather.  He didn’t neglect to tell me that Joe Crede was leading the AL in rbis.  Good thing I kept him on my APBA team. 

I updated him on my fantasy auction draft from yesterday.  I got Brandon Phillips late in the draft for a song ($7) and my opening bid for Tim Lincecum for $5 went uncontested. 

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the blog.  Here’s to another year!

-tbz

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We’re now upon college baseball season and I plan to do a lot of coverage of the Illini.  As I found out at the Big Ten Tournament last year, there are one or two who read those posts. 

For those who wish to use RSS and are only interested in University of Illinois baseball related articles, you can use The Baseball Zealot Illini feed and plug into your favorite news aggregator like Google Reader. 

There’s a handy RSS link on the right sidebar along with a link that will take you to all Illini baseball stuff (the ol’ fashioned way).

(What is RSS?)

Tags: Blog Administration, University of Illinois Baseball by The Baseball Zealot
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We’ve had some issues with RSS lately. Hopefully, they are solved by now. For those of you using readers and are still experiencing trouble, make sure you are pointing to this address.

my apologies for any inconvenience.

Tags: Blog Administration by The Baseball Zealot
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I have a lot of web-savvy readers but some are new to the idea of weblogs.

This video from Common Craft de-mystifies the whole concept, I think:

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I’ll be switching hats on Friday night. This time I’ll be the one interviewed. I’ll be a guest of Eric Loy on his radio show, DWS Sportsnite on Newstalk 1400 WDWS-AM based in Champaign, Illinois.

As far as I can tell, WDWS doesn’t stream their broadcast but those of you who live in the Champaign-Urbana area can catch me at 6:10pm Friday night.

The topic will be baseball (duh!) and despite the nasty, snowy weather out there right now, there’s actually a lot to cover right now between the Winter Meetings, Hall of Fame selections, Frick ballot, Hot Stove, Illini baseball…. I could go on forever.

Update: It was an enjoyable show. We discussed hot stove issues for three “local” teams (Cubs, Cardinals, Sox). Eric Loy knows his stuff and was so courteous to plug my blog twice.

Thanks to WDWS and Eric for the opportunity!

Tags: Blog Administration, Media by The Baseball Zealot
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After a few days of work, The Baseball Zealot has a new layout. I hope you like it. I do.

A few of the reasons I like it over the last one:

• it has a wider page for the content
• the comments are much more readable
• the blogging interface is more flexible
• quite honestly, it was just time for a change

I’ve been able to import all the current postings into the new system. Addtionally, any links to the old pages should be redirected to the new pages.

Also for those of you who use rss, this is our new RSS 2.0 url. If you are using the old one, it will redirect to the new one for time being.

comments are welcome on the new format. Let me know how you like it!

Tags: Blog Administration by The Baseball Zealot
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I’ve received at least two comments from readers that the text of the blog was a bit too small so I enlarged it a bit. 

Comments welcome. 

Tags: Blog Administration by The Baseball Zealot
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